The hand held blower unit has within the 1980's achieved a high level of domestic popularity, principally, for use in and about residential areas and for commercial applications such as sport arenas, etc. Some such units can interchangeably be operative as either a blower or vacuum as disclosed for example in U.S. Pat. No. 4,325,163. These blower units are typically utilized around a home or elsewhere for removing or displacing loose debris or refuse from walkways, gutters, benches or similar surfaces by means of an air blast flow. Commonly, such units are operative by means of an internal combustion engine having a vertically oriented piston motion and a horizontally oriented crankshaft on which the blower impeller is mounted. That construction is known to produce undesirable difficulties in handling of the unit resulting from the gyroscopic and centrifugal forces associated with that arrangement. A construction utilizing an internal combustion engine arranged for piston motion in a relative horizontal orientation with a crankshaft oriented vertically is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,461,055.
Whatever constructions have been utilized previously however, have generally been characterized by one or more disadvantages either in performance limitations or operator handling. In addition to the gyroscopic problem mentioned, some units are characterized by a weight imbalance, feasibility restriction to right hand use only attributed to an arrangement of operating controls and/or location of engine exhaust, undesirable suck up at start up, etc.
Such units are manufactured by a number of companies and competitively marketed largely on the basis of features, quality and price. For remaining competitive, each manufacturer instinctively strives to improve his product in a way that will enhance sales and increase profit. This has not always been easy to come by in a generally well developed highly competitive art. Obvious desired virtues of such units not universally achieved by constructions of the prior art are lightweight, ease of operation, minimal vibration, right or left hand use, etc., while producing reasonably high volume of highly forceful air in serving the intended purpose of the unit.